But I wanted--I want to see him.
When will he be back?"

"At any moment, I should think. But, Al'mah, no matter what you feel
about me, you must keep your engagement to sing here. The people in
there, a hundred of the best people of the county--"

"The best people of the county--such abject snobbery!" she retorted,
sharply. "Do you think that would influence me? You ought to know me
well enough--but that's just it, you do not know me. I realize it at
last. Listen now. I will not sing to-night, and you will go and tell
Mrs. Byng so."

Once again she turned away, but her exit was arrested by another voice,
a pleasant voice, which said:

"But just one minute, please. Mr. Fellowes is quite right.... Fellowes,
won't you go and say that Madame Al'mah will be there in five minutes?"

It was Ian Stafford. He had come at Jasmine's request to bring Al'mah,
and he had overheard her last words. He saw that there had been a
scene, and conceived that it was the kind of quarrel which could be
better arranged by a third disinterested person.

After a moment's hesitation, with an anxious yet hopeful look, Fellowes
disappeared, Al'mah's brown eyes following him with dark inquisition.
Presently she looked at Ian Stafford with a flash of malice. Did this
elegant and diplomatic person think that all he had to do was to speak,
and she would succumb to his blandishment? He should see.

He smiled, and courteously motioned her to a chair.

"You said to Mr. Fellowes that I should sing in five minutes," she
remarked maliciously and stubbornly, but she moved forward to the
chair, nevertheless.

"Yes, but there is no reason why we should not sit for three out of the
five minutes. Energy should be conserved in a tiring world."

"I have some energy to spare--the overflow," she returned with a
protesting flash of the eyes, as, however, she slowly seated herself.

"We call it power and magnetism in your case," he answered in that low,
soothing voice which had helped to quiet storms in more than one
chancellerie of Europe.... "What are you going to sing to-night?" he
added.

"I am not going to sing," she answered, nervously. "You heard what I
said to Mr. Fellowes."

"I was an unwilling eavesdropper; I heard your last words. But surely
you would not be so unoriginal, so cliche, as to say the same thing to
me that you said to Mr. Fellowes!"

His smile was winning and his humour came from a deep well. On the
instant she knew it to be real